Employer Coverage

New Yorkers covered under their employers have seen valuable additions to their health care plans. One important area of improvement has been the lifetime and annual limits for the insured. Limits were used to cap the amount insurance companies paid toward medical expenses. Under the ACA, this is no longer allowed.

There is another important addition to employer coverage made by the ACA. Young adults under the age of 26 can now have continuous coverage under their parents’ insurance. Many young adults are now getting the care they need. Families have one less thing to worry about.

Medicaid

There was an expansion of the qualifications for Medicaid, which helped thousands of new families enroll. This probably had the greatest impact of the entire program. Some families could not afford reliable insurance or meet high premiums before the act. Now, more New Yorkers can receive care when they need it. This equates to saving 170 New York lives due to medical related deaths each year.

Medicare

People covered by Medicare are receiving new benefits, too. 74% of New York seniors took advantage of the free preventative care option. They are enrolled in Medicare Plan B. That is 1,486,645 New York seniors. Preventative care includes wellness visits and cancer screening.

Individual Market

The rules of the ACA prohibit medical underwriting. This aspect of insurance coverage has now gone. This helps many with pre-existing conditions qualify for insurance. An estimated 8,616,234 New Yorkers have pre-existing conditions.

Funding is available to help people in their search for the best insurance premiums. Now, people can compare insurances plans before they buy. This helps them choose the best coverage for the price they can afford. It takes the guesswork out of choosing insurance.

Tax Credits

Tax credits are now available to individuals on private insurance programs. 123,830 New Yorkers receive tax credits. This averages $178 per month that can help offset the cost of insurance premiums.

Conclusion

All this data indicates that more people are able to use their insurance than in the past. Benefits in each bracket make healthcare more accessible to everyone. As more people continue to use health care services, more providers are needed. This is why there is currently a huge demand for online doctoral nursing programs and many nurse practitioners have decided to earn their MSN to DNP online through institutions such as Bradley University.

New Yorkers and the rest of the nation are waiting to see how the new administration will affect their benefits. However, they can expect more of the same for at least the next few years.

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Do you enjoy the dark humor?

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Facebook suggested I friend him. I guess our social networks overlapped. I guided the mouse toward his photo, and the little pointed hand hovered over his face. Fear and anger swelled up but curiosity won out and I clicked “Add Friend.” He accepted within minutes. Stunned, I wondered if he had forgotten raping me, or if he thought I had.

At 13, I was a lonely upper-middle-class Jewish nerd living on Long Island, in search of a tougher persona. He was part of an edgy crowd that hung out in a parking lot behind the school, sprawling over the cement steps like bored cats on a sofa. It was 1973, and the boys wore black leather jackets, smoked Marlboros and stashed pints of Tango and Thunderbird in their back pockets. One afternoon, making sure my long brown hair covered the blemish on my cheek, I went over and said, “Hi.”

That was really all it took. A few offered nods. One of the girls asked if I wanted to come out with them that night to the cemetery.

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“I realize that I’ve been hypnotized.”  — Jimi Hendrix

Where do self-destructive impulses come from? I had romanticized images of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin but they were dead long before I heard of them.

The first time I shot heroin was down at St. Mark’s place in 1978. I was a 17-year-old aspiring artist looking for a place to sell my Pollok-ish hand-painted T-shirts. I’d seen people leaning against the walls of Cooper Union, selling their junk on the strip between Lafayette and Third Ave.

I have no idea where my self-destructive impulses came from. I was prone to dark thoughts and there’s a history of suicidal tendencies in my Russian Jewish bloodline that dates back generations.

One uncle shot himself in the chest and died before he hit the bed. His brother died from a second heart attack; he’d ignored the doc and kept on popping pills and smoking four packs a day. On the paternal side, my aunt was found with a plastic bag around her head. The topic was taboo but what’s more enticing to a teen hellion than something you’re not supposed to do?

I had romanticized images of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, both long dead before I’d heard of them. Suburbia was traumatic for me and I was sick of arguing with my parents. I ran away at 15 and bee-lined for Greenwich Village where remnants of the sixties were everywhere. Guitars and radios played Bob Dylan, Neil Young; people singing waved me to come over. I liked the cool head shops on Eighth Street and hung around them, eavesdropping to learn about drugs and paraphernalia.

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Written for Honeysuckle Magazine

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Trying to get an unbiased education about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a never-ending conundrum. It’s like the parable of the blind men and the elephant — one blind man grabs the tail and says, “An elephant is like a rope,” another feels the trunk and says, “An elephant is like a snake.” Depending on where you go for information, you may get the tail or the trunk, but never the whole elephant.

On the evening of February 25, Manhattan’s 92nd Street Y hosted a screening of Jerusalem U’s documentary, “Crossing the Line 2: The New Face of Anti-Semitism on Campus.” After the movie there was a panel discussion featuring Eric Fingerhut, President and CEO of Hillel International, and three student activists, Justin Hayet from Binghamton University, Chloe Valdary from the University of New Orleans and Daniel Mael from Brandeis University. The moderator was Andy Borans, executive director of AEPi International.

For those who don’t know, Jerusalem U is a far-right, pro-Israel online organization. Don’t be fooled by the name: they aren’t a real university. But if you Google “Jerusalem University,” you get to their website.

I asked Jerusalem U founder and CEO Rabbi Raphael Shore to explain the U in the organization’s name. “Have you ever looked at iTunes U? Hello?” he said. “It’s a very common thing these days. If we had said ‘University’ people would say, ‘Wait, what’s going on?’ but when we say ‘Jerusalem U’ it indicates we are an Internet place of learning.”

When I asked if Jerusalem U offers a balanced education on Israel, Shore said, “We don’t feel we have to have 50% of Palestinian voices, just as the Palestinians don’t present 50% of Israeli voices.” When I asked if he felt that Jerusalem U offers a non-biased view of Israel, he said, “There is no such thing as a non-biased view on anything. That’s life.” When asked if educators about Israel should give equal time to Palestinian voices, he contradicted his earlier statement by saying, “We give 50% to Palestinian voices. That’s balanced.”

The film is a powerful depiction of deeply disturbing anti-Israel and anti-Semitic events on campuses, including shouting matches and swastikas. The shocking scenes in the film may inspire sympathy or fear and a motivation to fight for Israel — all of which are valuable aims — but I felt I only got the elephant’s tail. Where was the rest of the elephant, i.e., the opposing views?

I asked Jerusalem Post managing editor David Brinn if he found it odd that Hillel’s Fingerhut would align with this type of one-sided program. “I don’t find it jarring or strange that Fingerhut is appearing on a panel about anti-Semitism on college campuses,” he said. “Regardless of the political orientation of Jerusalem U, it’s a fact that anti-Jewish bias disguised as anti-Israel demonstrations and actions is on the rise on campuses, and it’s an issue that obviously affects Fingerhut and Hillel. So it makes perfect sense for him to appear on a panel that discusses the Jerusalem U film.”

“I would be delighted if Jerusalem U was exaggerating in order to gain advocates for Israel, but I fear that their films and projects point to real problems facing Israel and the Jewish world,” Brinn added. “I commend Fingerhut for including Jerusalem U under the same tent that he sits in with J Street.”

J Street U director Sarah Turbow, who also attended the screening, had a different view. “There are many organizations in the pro-Israel sphere that talk about themselves as apolitical. But I don’t believe that there is a way to educate about Israel without being political. It would have been very interesting to hear from pro-Palestinian perspectives in the film. My impression is that the film wanted to show one particular side. If that was their goal, they achieved it.”

Good to know I’m not the only one seeking more than one of the elephant’s appendages.

Hillel Spokesperson Arielle Poleg told me there was no conflict for Fingerhut. “Being pro-Israel is in Hillel’s DNA,” she said. “There is no contradiction between Hillel’s educational mission and its Israel advocacy. Under Eric’s leadership, Hillel has been pleased to partner with individuals and organizations representing a broad swath of opinion.”

This seemed like the tail but with a piece of the trunk.

Matti Friedman, a Jerusalem-based journalist and author who wrote a compelling article for the Atlantic titled, “What the Media Gets Wrong About Israel,” said, “The resurgence of anti-Semitism is very real but much of the hysteria coming from the Jewish community is not helpful. What we need is not more advocacy but more intelligent journalism by knowledgeable people without an ideological ax to grind.”

I couldn’t agree more.

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